Tag Archives: no choice

“When faced with two equally tough choices, most people choose the third choice: to not choose. ”
― Jarod Kintz

What stops more people from achieving their desired results than anything else? It is the inability to make a choice. People make choices all of the time but when asked what they want from life, they hesitate. Maybe you do as well. What do you really want? Living the life you really want comes down to making choices.

One of the more popular questions I get asked is “How do I make a decision?” And maybe it isn’t how to make a decision it is how to commit to that decision once it is made. Decisions often require some level of risk. To do one thing I give up something else, or do I?

The challenging part of making a decision is living with the decision that is made. The second guessing of the decision or the fact that there was a cost to the decision in the first place leaves many wondering if it was the right choice. Be prepared to commit to the decision whatever it is before you make the decision. Believe that your decision is correct and set your expectations accordingly.

What decisions do you want to make? How will you make them? How long will it take to make the decision? What will it take to commit to that decision?

Listen to a commencement speech by Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com founder) and answer the questions. What do you want your answers to be?

“I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!”
― Oscar Wilde

You have a choice.

It is that you don’t want to do it, it is just that you don’t do what you want. Our habits inhibit us from making the choices that allow us to grow and to experience new things. Our brains are so intent on staying the same and staying safe that making a choice to change for the better takes a supreme effort and most people are unwilling to choose change over being the same.

Our choices will dictate how we feel about a day, overwhelmed, satisfied or overjoyed. For some people the day defines their mood, others their mood defines their day. How do you choose your mood? Why not be satisfied with an average day? A day without the tiresome worry of doing more, a day that is filled with just enough, an average day. What would it take to create an average day rather than a day stuffed with too much activity? It is a choice. What do you choose to make important?

Time management is about choices. Some people are stuck with so much to do that they become depressed. They seem to be putting all their effort into tasks that are neither important or urgent, it just feels that they are. People that know how to master their time, focus on doing two things, the important and urgent, and the important and non-urgent tasks. What do you focus on?

Here’s a simple way to decide what to do, use the ABC rule. All things that are very important are done first as in if you don’t do them bad things happen, those are “A” choices. Then there are “B” choices, good things happen when I do these. And there is the “C” choice, these are the, nice to do when you have the time. Where do people put their time in effort into, the “C” choices, often waiting for bad things to happen before they address those “A” choices, and neglect the “B” choices, the choices they really want to make.

Barry Schwartz (TED) thinks we have too many choices. What do you think?